Mulberries, mulberries, mulberries

I've been picking around a quart of mulberries every day and have been freezing most of them so I don't get sick of them, but here are some recipes of things I've done with them so far:

Mulberry Vinaigrette-

Ingredients
1 cup mulberries.......Free
1/4 cup oil............50 cents (MUCH cheaper oil could be substituted)
4 tsp rice vinegar.....11 cents
6 tsp cider vinegar....9 cents
1 tsp dijon mustard....3 cents
salt and pepper........1 cent
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Approx. cost $.74

I mashed the mulberries through a cheesecloth (a real strainer would have worked better) then mixed the juice with the remaining ingredients and salt and peppered to taste.

I fed the post-juicing mulberry paste to the chickens, they loved it and had some purple lipstick for the rest of the day, which unfortunately I don't have a picture of. Here's a picture of the vinaigrette on some salad I grew.


Mulberry Gelato-
I just converted a recipe for strawberry gelato, but I forgot to take into account that strawberries have a bit of tartness that mulberries do not. Here is the recipe I made, but in the future I will cut down the sugar by 1/2 cup. (This recipe had an almost marshmallowy flavor) Note: I don't have an actual "double boiler", I just kept the egg/sugar/vanilla mixture in the kitchenaid bowl and rested that in a pot of boiling water)

Ingredients
- 6 egg yolks............................ free (minus cost of chicken feed)
- 1.5 cups sugar......................... 52 cents
- 4 cups organic milk.................... $1.50
- 2 big tablespoons vanilla extract ..... 35 cents
- 1.5 cups gently macerated mulberries... free
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Approx. cost $2.37 (next time with the reduced sugar: $2.20, with conventional milk only $1.45) Yield is about 1/2 gallon.

1. Beat yolks and sugar until the mixture becomes fluffy.

2. Add milk and vanilla, stirring continuously until the mixture is well blended.

3. Pour mixture into the top of a double boiler and cook over low heat until the mixture is the consistency of light cream.

4. Keep stirring to prevent lumps.

5. Pour the cooked mixture through a fine strainer (I skipped this straining, everything turned out fine), and cool in the refrigerator until cold (1-2 hours)

6. Place cold mixture in electric ice cream maker, add the mulberries

7. Process according to the directions for your machine.

Also, mulberry pancakes (recipe: make pancake batter, add mulberries) and tonight I'm going to make some mulberry syrup. I will have to tinker with a simple syrup recipe as I want it to have a mulberry flavor and not be overpowered by sweetness.